Jared Bernstein, a Hunter College School of Social Work (MSW’86) alumnus, has been appointed by Vice President-Elect Joseph Biden as Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser.

Bernstein currently serves as the Director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute. He is an expert in the areas of federal, state and international economic policies, specifically the middle-class squeeze, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets, poverty and international comparisons. Bernstein has been an economist at the Economic Policy Institute since 1992 and is a renowned author of several books and academic treatises on the economy and the middle class.

From 1995-1996, he served as Deputy Chief Economist for the Department of Labor under Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Bernstein is on the Congressional Budget Office’s advisory committee. He has also taught at Howard University, Columbia University and New York University.